Where My Demons Hide
by Mercury Teardrops
Summary: A tragic day in Hueco Mundo, a whole lifetime relived right before his death, and Ulquiorra remembers a time when he loved someone to the point of breaking. Rated T for dark themes and swearing.


Hello, _Bleach_ fandom. So this is my first fic for _Bleach_, inspired by the moment between Ulquiorra and Orihime when he dies. It would mean a lot if you guys gave it a shot.

* * *

><p><span><em>Where My Demons Hide<em>

…

_"I want to hide the truth_

_I want to shelter you_

_But with the beast inside_

_There's nowhere we can hide…"_

…

There is a moment before any great tragedy when all is still, when not a vibration dares to break the still air and the very earth holds its breath, holds it and waits to exhale and whip everything around in a mad frenzy of _who am I? What am I going to do?_

After Ulquiorra cut down Kurosaki Ichigo, the air in Hueco Mundo simply ceased its moving in a shock that lasted between the inhale and exhale of a breath. His mask crumbled and he fell—and now he is falling, falling, falling, until the ground comes vertical and meets him like a glass wall.

"Ku…-ro…-saki…-kun…" the woman says, paralyzed by the sight of Kurosaki lying, face down, on the ground. The image has not yet truly reached her, and when it does, her desperate shriek stabs through the air in Hueco Mundo and she folds over at his side. _"Kurosaki-kun!"_ she screams, places her hands on his back and shakes him terribly. "Kurosaki-kun! Kurosaki-kun!" Words seem to have deserted her, as all she is able to do is utter his name.

It is strange, Ulquiorra thinks, the way she says his name. Her mouth forms the words with such pure instinct that it almost lacks meaning, because it isn't his name anymore, it is a sound—five syllables of whispered promises and certainties too deep-rooted for even him to understand—created by a princess in her time of need, a princess trapped in a tower guarded by a dragon, a princess who believes with every ounce of her being that a valiant prince is coming, always coming, to her aid, as though his very existence is a blood oath to her safety.

But even as her mouth opens to scream his name into the jarring air around them, her face contorts with pain that she needs him so, that she is so dependent on this boy who, in the end, is still just a boy. But she is just a girl—a kidnapped princess—and don't all mortal fairytales prophesize the princess's dependence on that boy? True love, they call it, but really it is nothing more than a kiss and a battle against a common enemy in a kingdom of ruin and despair.

"_Kurosaki-kun!"_ she pleads, begs fate for his life back, because it is her fault, she must think, _It's my fault. _Ulquiorra can see her dependence on him tear her apart, her resolve to _stop being_ that princess simply because it causes the boy so much pain and suffering.

She cries freely, unafraid of being judged. She cries like she believes it will heal everything, will pick up the broken pieces and put them together. "Kurosaki-kun, please!"

Ulquiorra turns away. _Kurosaki Ichigo…_he thinks, _I will remember you for as long as I have to live._ And he doesn't have long. Already, he can feel his death fading away; his blood has nearly ceased its flow through his limbs and his lungs struggle to fill with air. And Ulquiorra thinks that at least he is able to make a difference in his death; before his very existence is erased from the fabric of the universe, at least he is able to eliminate the one obstacle with even the potential to stand between Lord Aizen and the world.

He senses a great amount of spiritual pressure behind his ear, and he looks back just as the last of Ichigo's _konpaku_ whirl together and replace the hole in his chest. It is not a rejection of phenomena, but instead is—_super high-speed regeneration?_ Ulquiorra wonders. It is possible, given the previous manifestation of his Hollow form in his mortal body. Possible—but not probable.

"Kurosaki-kun?" the woman says, standing back and eyeing him with wariness, as though he isn't really there, is just a ghost come to torment her even more.

Kurosaki stands with a great deal of effort, but his attention is focused on his chest, where Ulquiorra had stabbed him. He pats his chest, but it is as solid as it was before. "What—? There was a hole here…"

"Kurosaki-kun," she says again. She smiles.

He seems to realize she is there and turns to her. "Inoue, are you okay?" And in response, her smile turns into an all-out, thousand-watt beam.

_How strange_, Ulquiorra marvels, _that immediately after returning from death his first concern is the wellbeing of this woman, the kidnapped princess trapped in a tower._ Almost afraid, he wonders, _Is this what "heart" is?_

"Ishida…" Kurosaki says, turning to the Quincy.

He smirks through his pain. "Finally, woken up, have you?" Kurosaki nearly chokes on the sight of him with a sword intersecting his stomach, and Ulquiorra can see his mind flitting around, trying to figure out who did it—can see him finally reach his conclusion.

"…Did _I_ do that to you?" he asks hesitantly. He looks almost _scared_ of the sword embedded in the Quincy—no, not of the sword, of himself. _You are afraid of your own power?_ Ulquiorra thinks. _Trash._

"Persistent, aren't you?" Ulquiorra says. He wants to finish this battle once and for all, before he is unable to fight altogether.

Kurosaki turns like the snap of a whip. His eyes scan over Ulquiorra, sees his shattered form, his missing limbs. His mouth tightens. "Did I do that to you?"

Ulquiorra flashes to the Quincy's side and slides the sword out of his stomach without hesitation. "Take it," Ulquiorra says to Kurosaki, throwing it at him. "Let's resolve this conflict once and for all." They must hurry, he thinks, for he can feel himself nearing nothingness.

"Did I do that to Ishida?" Kurosaki asks stubbornly.

"Who cares?"

"And you? Your leg and arms? Was that me?"

_What are you going to do if it was?_ Ulquiorra thinks. _What will that "heart" of yours, that seems to guide you in every stupid action you take, tell you to do next?_

"If it was, then cut my limbs off as well.

"You were fighting a mindless hollow right now. That's not me, wasn't me. If we're gonna end this, we'll do it as equals." Determination flares in Kurosaki's eyes.

"Kurosaki-kun!" the woman cries.

"Kurosaki!" the Quincy shouts. "D'you realize what you're doing?"

Ulquiorra chuckles inwardly._ You would risk your friends' lives for the sake of your honor? Is this your heart talking? If so, I'm glad I don't have one of these foolish things. It seems all it is good for is leading you to your demise._

"Fine," he says. "If that's what you want, so be it."

But then he feels his _Resurrección_ begin to fade, and he wonders, _What is this? Is this a ruse?_ But judging from the confusion in Kurosaki's eyes, it isn't. He can feel himself turning to ashes, blowing away in the winds of Hueco Mundo.

_I'm going to die right now,_ Ulquiorra thinks. He thinks of the gaping hole in his chest, of the heart he lost so long ago, and, almost laughingly, he thinks to nothingness and the oppressive air around them, _Isn't this long overdo?_

He turns his head up into the damnation-black of the sky and whispers to the wind, _"What d'you think, Yoshino-sama?"_

~x~

_I grew up as the conception of a whore and a shopkeeper at a time when pollution had not yet haunted the streets of Japan and when each morning the rising sun bathed the horizon in hues of liquid gold. My father had an eye for beauty, a fetish even, and when he met my mother he fell in love with her eyes, her smile, the fullness of her lips, the inky blackness of her hair._

_She was from a samurai family, my mother. At the time, she fell in love with my father, too, with his adorations and the way he followed her around like a lost puppy, brought her flowers for her inky hair and crooned to her, told her she was beautiful._

_But her family didn't approve of her "feelings" for this low-class boy. They were young at the time, my parents, and head-over-heels in love. They ran away and started a life together filled with flowers and kisses and material things._

_Time passed, they had me, and my father grew poor. His shop wasn't fairing well, money was low, and my mother fell into despair. She, the pampered daughter of a samurai, couldn't stand the hard life. And with the money we had left, she drowned herself in liquor._

_Official papers were never filled out, a ceremony not even considered, but the tavern became my mother's home and she was no longer my father's to keep. She scattered her girlhood to the four winds and soon it was just another word nobody cared for._

~x~

_Those people are trash to me now. That little boy is trash, too._

_His name was Kataoka Akitoshi._

~x~

Akitoshi pushes up the metal blinds of his shop, revealing the first colors of dawn. Their shop, his and his dad's, is a dinghy little place facing west in the city of Kyoto. It is small, just on the outer edges of the city, with few visitors. Occasionally, travelers will pass by and his father will be able to sell a few things, but usually Akitoshi pushes a cart down to the market in Kyoto and tries his best to sell his father's wares.

"Hey, old lady, how much is this?" a loud voice yells from his right. Akitoshi turns in curiosity—not many people bother to come to their area early in the morning to buy things. He sees a little boy leaning precariously from a carriage to finger a shabbily carved wooden dagger with interest. From what Akitoshi can see, the boy is dressed in rich silks with bright, overflowing colors—the kind of clothes only members of a samurai family could afford.

The old woman, whom Akitoshi's father knows well, looks ready to explode with pleasure. "For you, sir, only—"

"Never mind," the boy sneers, tucking the knife into the sleeve of his shirt. "I'm taking this. Let's go, Hayashi."

There is a murmured voice from within at the same time as the old woman surges up and protests, "Young man, you can't do that!"

The coachman snaps the reins of the horse and they drive a little bit down the road before the boy leans out from the still-moving carriage and throws back the dagger with a shout of, _"Fine,_ take it!"

The knife spirals through the air and the hilt hits the old woman on the head. She cries out as the carriage disappears down the road back to Kyoto.

Akitoshi turns away, smoothing over his face, and begins to arrange his cart. It is none of his business what happens to others. Besides, someone else will help the woman.

~x~

"Hey! Get away from here!" a man yells.

"Shut up, trash!" a familiar voice replies, cracking at the peak.

Akitoshi leaves his dinner and dad in favor of wandering to the raised blinds of their shop, and he sits on the counter. He looks back at his dad before he leans out, but his dad is too preoccupied with something or the other to notice; he always is, and Akitoshi has gotten used to all but raising himself. He turns away and angles his body out from under the shade of their little house.

The boy from that morning is back again. He is by himself this time, mounted on a chestnut horse that blazes in the setting sun. A knife swings on his finger with nonchalance. It makes the old woman's dagger look crude, like the plaything of a child. Akitoshi has a feeling that that is the boy's intention.

"Don't tell," hisses the boy. He hops off his horse and jerks it by the reins, moving closer to the man standing outside the old woman's shop. He is the old woman's son. His mother is cowering behind him.

"We don't want anything to do with brats like you," the man says, voice strained. Sweat beads on his forehead, and he clearly wants to end the encounter as quickly as possible.

"Hey!" the boy snaps. "I'm not _talking_ to you." He stops his spinning of the knife and points it behind the man, at the old woman. "I'm talking to the whore."

Akitoshi flinches at the word, and behind him he can hear his father knock over his bowl. Instead of moving to pick it up, he leans out farther and watches even more closely.

The man, with a war cry, had moved forward and now grabs the boy by his collar, lifting him up spinning him around to pin him to the wall of their shop. "Don't you _ever_ call my mother that again," he growls, spittle flying out of his mouth.

The boy cringes and he tries to lift his hand up beside him, but the man sees this and slams his wrist against the shack. "Do you hear me?" says the man.

"Don't tell _anyone_ about this morning," the boy insists. "My father would never forgive me for ruining his good name." His eyes fall to the ground.

"Hah!" the man barks out. "_Your father?_ Samurai Fujioji doesn't _have_ a good name; he sours it each time he brings a whore home from the streets."

The boy's eyes fly wide apart and he turns ashen. He moves his mouth in motions miming talking, but words fail him. He settles on spitting in the man's face.

The man draws back with a cry, dropping the boy from the wall. He wipes his hand over his grimy face. "You little bastard!" he screams, while Akitoshi, in his curiosity, hops off the counter and wanders closer, leaning against his cart. He doesn't bother to hide his interest for the conversation.

"Son! Please, stop!" the old woman cries out, flinging herself onto the dry earth as the man swings his fist and the boy ducks, just barely avoiding the blow. Akitoshi's nose wrinkles up at her weakness; he never wants to be that weak.

"Kiyoshita-kun!" someone cries at the same time, accompanied by the clatter and click-clack of horses with a carriage. Akitoshi's head snaps around and sees a lovely young woman fly out of a moving carriage and run to the boy. "Stop, sir, please, stop!" she holds her smooth hands up in defense.

"Move aside, woman," the man growls roughly, grabbing her by the slender wrist and jerking her away. "I need to teach the boy a lesson."

She falls with a cry, and the boy jumps up, knife swinging. He nicks the man's chin and he cries out. "Don't touch her!" the boy—Kiyoshita-kun—fumes.

"It's okay, Kiyoshita-kun," the woman says in a small voice, rubbing her wrist.

"Shut up, Yoshino!" Kiyoshita yells. Storming away, he sees Akitoshi leaning against the cart. "Don't tell," he growls at Akitoshi.

Akitoshi blinks and lowers his eyes in response, but that isn't enough for the boy. Kiyoshita advances on him next and jerks up the neck of his tunic, so their faces are mere millimeters away from each other. He doesn't talk—at this point Akitoshi figures words are beyond him. Instead, he lifts his fist and slams it into Akitoshi's nose.

"Ah!" Akitoshi screams, hand coming up to cup his nose. Kiyoshita tosses him aside, and he hits the dirt with enough force to knock the air from his lungs. He curls up on his side and holds his head in his arms.

"Kiyoshita-kun!" the woman cries, grabbing the boy by the wrist. "Stop, please! I know you're angry, but I care about you."

Kiyoshita's eyes are like coals, burning, burning, burning. His words are fatal, the killing blow of a sword, as he says, "Shut up, Yoshino! Why d'you even care? You've got no right to care after you abandoned me! You're not my sister anymore!" He tears his hand from her hold, marches away and gets on the horse.

"Kiyoshita-kun, come back!" the same female voice calls again, but the clatter of hooves signal that he is already gone.

"Fujioji-dono, shall we follow him?" a male voice asks.

The woman sighs, and Akitoshi can _hear_ her despair through his pain. "No. No, Hayashi, let's help these people."

Akitoshi feels his body being lifted by gentle hands. His nose hurts, the pain threatening to wipe out all other senses. "Open your eyes," the woman's voice instructs. Without thinking, he opens them and the setting sun assaults them violently. On instinct, he scrunches his nose up, and a mind-splitting agony reappears in his skull.

"Agh!" he cries, falling on his side, hands cupping his nose.

"Oh, Kami-sama, what did my brother do to you?" the woman croons. "Hayashi, help the others," she says to somebody else as she gently pulls him up again and sits him against his cart.

Akitoshi blinks his eyes open tentatively. The first thing he sees is the woman. She is beautiful, he thinks and feels his pain become unimportant. Her lips are painted deep red, the bottom one full and moist. Her dark eyes, wide and earnest, look into his. A gentle breeze ripples through her hair, causing a strand of black to swing back and forth in front of her face like a pendulum.

"You look awful," she remarks. She pulls out a white cloth from her sleeve and hands it to him. "Here, use this to stop the blood."

Akitoshi stares at the handkerchief dumbly. Never before has he seen something so clean. The silk it is made from is the color of freshly fallen snow. It caresses his fingers even as he caresses it back, afraid to hold it too tightly and risk losing its softness. He looks at the woman questioningly. Is she really giving this to him? A mere shopkeeper's son? It hardly seems possible.

But she nods go on, and gives him a smile that lights him up from the inside out. Akitoshi presses the cloth to his nose and lifts the corner of his lips bleakly. He croaks, "Who are you? Who's that kid?"

The woman's smile is grim. "He's my brother. I'm really sorry for the trouble he caused. I just came back from a trip, and I'm afraid I left him during a terrible time…" Her lips continue moving, but her voice softens and all Akitoshi can hear is, "…it's my fault."

Akitoshi shakes his head vigorously, his mind pounding at the action. "You shouldn't be sorry for your brother," he says. Almost like a growl, he says, "The little bastard should be the one apologizing to you, and that woman and her son."

The woman draws back like she's been stricken. Her eyes are searching his face for something, but whatever it is, Akitoshi's face is the calmness of a still pond, and she doesn't find it there. "You"—her voice shakes—"have no right to say something like that about my brother."

Akitoshi can't stand the way she is suddenly looking at him, like the devil incarnate, like he's just done something unforgivable. He turns his head away, lays it flat against the side of his cart. And he says without a trace of emotion, "Are you saying he isn't responsible for his actions?"

The woman narrows her eyes at him, their centers burning and smoldering like two cigarettes. "Shut up," she says, her voice the blankness of a knife sharpened to nothingness. "Shut up, take it back, _take it back_." There is no threat in her voice, but it sounds desperate, feels like she has that knife pressed to Akitoshi's throat and drawing out blood.

"I didn't say anything wrong," Akitoshi says, softly, so softly. He is afraid to look at her, to look into her hard eyes.

A man appears by the woman's side and lays a calming hand on her shoulder. "Let's go, Yoshino-dono," he murmurs, and the woman rises like an oncoming storm and turns away from Akitoshi, only leveling a glare of pure anger before she disappears between the snap of two whips.

Akitoshi waits 'til she is gone before looking back up.

~x~

Akitoshi dreams of the woman that night, dreams of her hair and her voice and the smolder of her pitch black eyes. He tosses and turns in his bed and wakes up in the middle of the night gasping and screaming for breath after he accidentally crushes his nose.

In the morning, he leaves before his dad can wake up and wheels his cart to the market in Kyoto. He hopes that he will see her today, even though he doesn't know why. All he knows is that he can remember the exact texture of her eyes and the sound of voice speaking to him, despite that they barely exchanged more than a handful of heated words.

He arrives earlier than usual at his normal spot and begins to try and sell as much as possible to the few people outside at this time of the day. It is midday when hears the clatter of a carriage and the sound of her voice, soothing like it had been before he went and ruined everything.

"I thought I was gonna have to pay you a visit," she says. Akitoshi's head snaps up from the ground.

"Hello," he murmurs glumly, looking down again.

"I came to apologize," she says.

"I told you, you don't need to," Akitoshi says, focusing on the lines on his palm.

"Look up." Her voice sharpens. His response is automatic. "I didn't come to apologize for my brother," she tells him, satisfied by their eye contact. "I came to apologize for my reaction yesterday. I said some very inappropriate things."

It goes against every cell in Akitoshi's body to not forgive her immediately—and that makes him very uncomfortable, that this woman he just met can make him feel like that. He drops his head again, says in a low voice, "You should be. I was only voicing my opinion."

She frowns, narrows her brows. She presses her blood-red lips into a thin line and says slowly, "All right, then. I'll be going now."

Akitoshi's head snaps up. He doesn't want her to leave. "Would you like a fan?" he offers without thinking, holding up the nearest one in his hand.

She blinks once at him, twice at the fan. Akitoshi feels a blush creeping onto his pale face. What was he thinking? She's practically royalty compared to him. Why would she want a ragged fan when she probably has fans by the dozen much better than the ones he has to offer?

He lowers his hand almost sullenly. "I mean—never mind."

"No," she says, plucking it from his fingers. He looks at her in confusion, but she ignores him. "How much is this?" she asks, giving his a perfunctory glance.

Akitoshi tries to hold back his smile as he says, "You can have it—for free."

She looks up from her examining of the fan, eyes him dubiously with the corner of her lips curving upward. She must have seen something she likes, for she blows a light amount of air from her nose and shakes her head at him. "Here, take this, fool," she says flippantly, tossing him a coin.

Akitoshi catches it in his hand. She's paid more than was necessary, and he looks up to call out her name, but she is already walking away languidly, fanning herself despite the cool autumn air. He nearly smiles, despite himself, content to watch her get in her carriage and drive away.

~x~

She quickly becomes a regular to the market, pays hours-long visits every other day in her carriage. Sometimes, she comes specifically to talk to Akitoshi, and other times she has an errand to run. Even so, she always finds time to exchange a few words with Akitoshi before she leaves.

Her brother Kiyoshita, however, is nearly disappeared, occasionally being spotted around town with head bowed and some sort of injury apparent on his face and arms. Akitoshi doesn't know what has become of the troubled boy, and he doesn't care for it either. The only times Kiyoshita comes to mind is when she mentions him breezily as she talks about home and life in the inner ring of Kyoto— and she usually gets a far-away look in her eyes when she does this, so Akitoshi rarely pursues the topic because he likes her with him, always, in mind and in body.

"Akitoshi-kun," she says as she strolls up to him, the languid roll of her hips mesmerizing in their effortless movements. She is wearing a simple kimono and her hair is pinned up with chopsticks, but it still fails to hold one wing of her hair, which falls in front of her eyes and swings in the breeze. As always, her lips are painted a fierce red, not so much bright crimson but the color of blood in its first seconds of being exposed to air.

"Fujioji-dono," Akitoshi says, stopping what he is doing to give her his full attention. She deserves nothing less, in his opinion.

She examines a fan nearby and snaps it open with a swift movement of the wrist, begins fanning herself easily as she talks. "We've known each other for nearly a year. You can call me by my first name."

Akitoshi draws back, looking down with a slight blush dusting his cheeks. His pulse races at the thought, and he has to admit he likes the thought of him greeting her by her given name, but—"That's not appropriate, Fujioji-dono." He is not nearly at her level, and addressing her like otherwise is an insult to her social class.

"C'mon," she urges, "Yoshino-san, say it with me, _Yoshino-san_."

Akitoshi shakes his head, a grin stealing over his lips. He can't resist when she smiles at him like that. "Fine, Yoshino-_sama_."

She is frowning when he looks up, but not in a way that says he's offended her. "Fine," she sighs, snapping the fan shut. "Yoshino-sama"—she rolls her eyes—"it is." And then she leaves in her carriage and he watches her go.

~x~

But at night, he whispers her name to the cool air, trying out voices to test which one sounds the best with the syllables of her.

~x~

"Akitoshi-kun," she calls out.

Akitoshi lifts his head, her name on his lips. His eyes focus on the young man walking beside her. "Yoshino-sama," he says, "who's this?" He feels something odd niggling at his stomach. The feeling is sickening and creates an enormous amount of frustration, and the longer Akitoshi looks at the man the more he wants to drive his fist into something.

"Akitoshi-kun," she repeats, "guess what? Akitoshi-kun, this is my boyfriend. He's courting me." She leans into the man comfortably and Akitoshi feels something strange and unsteady rising within him. To the man, she says, "Tsukishima-kun, this is Kataoka Akitoshi-kun."

"Kataoka-kun," the man says, voice smooth as silk, "it's nice to meet you. My name is Ikeda Tsukishima." He is dressed nicely, in colors that complement his girlfriend's kimono. He wraps his arm around Yoshino's waist and she giggles at the contact because—_she's ticklish,_ Akitoshi thinks, glaring at the man, _bet you didn't know that._

Akitoshi smiles thinly and takes his hand. "It's my pleasure," he forces out through gritted teeth. He is overwhelmed with confusion by his feelings, by the anger suddenly pulsing through his veins. Lately he's been feelings like this a lot; usually it comes when he sees Yoshino talk to someone besides him, smile at someone else, especially males.

His gaze goes to Yoshino, and he wishes for a moment alone with her, but what would he say? How can he express to her his feelings, which he himself can't even begin to comprehend?

"Yoshino-chan, hey, didn't you say you wanted to buy some apples?" Tsukishima asks.

"Oh yeah." She turns away from a trinket she was fingering and waves goodbye to Akitoshi. "Bye, Akitoshi-kun. We'll talk some other time."

Akitoshi clenches his fists as he watches them walk down the market, arms around each other. His anger surges up within him and he can feel it, can feel something dark and strange and unsteady writhing inside of him, eating him away from the inside out and leaving not a morsel of himself behind in the blank void it leaves.

~x~

One week, Yoshino-sama doesn't come to his booth at all, even though she's visited every other day since she came back from her trip so long ago. At first, Akitoshi is in despair, is a wreck and distracted, jumping at the very sound of a carriage because he hopes it's her.

Then he calms because she'll come back next week, _she will_, finds new ways of diverting his attention from the disappeared Yoshino-sama—until she doesn't come back next week, or the week after that.

Akitoshi finally takes to asking some of the marketplace people of her whereabouts, but all he finds are rumors of a marriage, and he ignores them.

_She will come back,_ he tells himself firmly, _she will, she will…I'll make her._

~x~

It has been three weeks since he last saw Yoshino, and Akitoshi finds himself not worried anymore, no, far from that. Rather, there is an emptiness eating away inside him, a monster with sad green eyes and an appetite for anything and everything. He _needs_ Yoshino-sama, needs her and craves her, her smile and her eyes and her words, which he will eat the moment he hears her voice again, to fill the gap within him.

"Akitoshi-kun," Yoshino-sama's voice says on the eve of the three-week anniversary of her disappearance.

Akitoshi is sitting outside, marinating in the humid summer air with eyes closed and sweat beading on his forehead. His eyes pop open at the sound of her voice and he jumps up excitedly. "Where were you?" he demands.

"Busy," she says breezily, deliberately avoiding his eyes. "There were some problems at home, but everything's all right now."

"What happened?" Akitoshi asks, leaning forward to listen to her. He drinks her words in, drinks in her fierce lips and the warmth in her eyes, like they are reflecting a fireplace in their depths. Drinks in the way a strand of her hair swings in front of her face in the breeze.

"I'm getting married to Tsukishima-kun," Yoshino says. Her smile is the stars bound to earth.

Suddenly, Akitoshi feels his throat go dry. He is enveloped by a wave of despair, enough to cover up the emptiness, but he suddenly wishes it wouldn't; anything is better than this, this feeling of overwhelming sadness and hopelessness and, above it all, _wanting_, he wants her so much and he doesn't know why.

"Why?" he says, turning to her with hollow eyes. "Why?"

She looks at him and the sharp brightness of her eyes dim. "Oh, Akitoshi-kun, it's because I love him." Akitoshi still looks at her with confusion, and she sighs. "And it's an arranged marriage, Akitoshi-kun. We were supposed to be married since we were babies."

Akitoshi swallows hard. He feels like he is drowning, was drowning, like he's always been drowning and only now did he notice. "Yoshino-sama, we're friends, right?" He looks up at her pleadingly.

She sighs and sits down, dragging him down with her. She puts her hand on his, and says softly, "Of course, Akitoshi-kun. Of course I'm your friend. Always have, always will be."

Akitoshi looks at her. _Your friend,_ she'd said, like she was his. He likes the sound of that, he admits, that she is his, his possession, his lover, his, his, his. He likes the idea of her smiling just for him, laughing just for him, crying and raging just for him.

But—_That isn't enough,_ he thinks. Even if she is his, he will always have to share her with someone else. He will never be able to hold hands with her in public or kiss her and wrap his arms around her like Tsukishima can, and what good is a relationship that nobody knows about? If nobody recognizes her as his, then is she really?

Akitoshi looks down at his palms helplessly, as though the lines and callouses mapped out on its surface will tell him why he wants her so much, _needs_ her so much. Those marks, he realizes, define so much of him: a little boy born into a hard family who grew up paying for each meal with sweat and tears. It is hard to imagine Yoshino in that person, Yoshino who erases despair and troubles with a smile. She doesn't fit into his world, and he can't try to squish her into it, and that makes him angry, makes him so mad and monstrous.

"Yoshino-sama," he croaks out, needy—he needs her to fill him up again, to take away the dark emptiness within him, because the monster is still eating away and it hurts, oh Kami-sama, it hurts so much, the lack of everything.

"Yoshino-sama, if you're my friend, _mine_, please don't leave." He turns to her and grabs her shoulders. "I can't live without you, Yoshino-sama, I can't."

She draws back, leans away from him. "Akitoshi-kun, stop it," she orders softly. "Please, stop."

"I can't," Akitoshi begs. "Only you can stop it." He stares into her eyes. "Only you can," he whispers decidedly.

Without warning, he shifts her against the wall and lands his mouth on hers firmly, brutal and clumsy in his longing. She gasps, first, but she responds to him, kisses him back fiercely. He knows this is not her first kiss, he is not her first kiss, and the thought angers him. He kisses her harder, mashes his lips against hers, and it is then, when it becomes painful for the both of them, that she begins to fight back, hands pushing against his chest.

He draws back for breath and she eyes him with fear in her eyes. His need, his wanting, his emptiness is not fulfilled, as it should have been after that kiss. He tears a hand through his dark hair and growls, confused by the gaping emptiness in his chest. It hurts, this feeling, this stabbing, cracking nothingness, peeling away at everything and he can't breathe, dear Kami-sama, _I can't breathe_.

He stands up abruptly and backs away.

"Akitoshi-kun…" she says, hesitant. She pushes herself off of the ground and takes a step towards him, then another back against the wall.

His head bowed, shoulders heaving, he growls in frustration. "Why?" he demands, glaring at her angrily. "Why do I have to feel this way around you?" He advances on her and plants both hands on the wall behind her. She flinches. "When you're gone I can't feel anything, it's like there's something inside me consuming me, eating away at everything I am and everything that makes me human.

"I _need_ you, Yoshino-sama, I need you to take away that lack of feeling, that emptiness…But the only way that'll happen is if you're mine." He slams a fist down on the wall and she whimpers. "You're getting married, Yoshino-sama, but I can't live without you. I need you to be mine and you can't be but—_don't you understand, Yoshino-sama?_ I can't go on living like this, without you.

_"Yoshino-sama,"_ he pleads, looking up into her eyes, willing to say anything to keep her, do anything to make her his, "I _love _you and—and I'm going to die without you."

She draws her hands up in front of her face, cowering behind them. "No, Akitoshi-kun, please, don't say that. _Please_."

Akitoshi blinks. He withdraws and hunches his shoulder. "Are you afraid?" he asks quietly.

She looks into his eyes and shakes her head numbly. "No, I'm not."

He grips his head and pressures it, wishing it would just implode and he could end it, everything. "I am."

He refuses to meet her eyes as he turns and flees inside his house, his need and wanting consuming him from the inside out, leaving nothing behind but empty, empty, empty.

~x~

"Did you hear?" a woman whispers as she walks by with her friend.

"Who didn't?" her friend whispers back. "I still can't believe it. She was so young."

"And all that life, wasted," replies the woman, shaking her head regretfully. "It's a shame, really."

Akitoshi isn't one to worry himself with the town's petty gossip, but he listens this time—because he's listening, waiting, seeking out any news on Yoshino-sama. He's almost feverish in his never-ending quest to seek out information on her, like a jealous lover, really.

…And that's what he is, he thinks: her lover. She may not love him, but he sure as the sun's set in front of his house everyday knows that he loves her, would die for her, would die without her. He _needs_ her, like a drunkard needs his bottles of gin and whisky, and he wonders if this is what his mother felt like when she left.

It's a good thing Yoshino-sama isn't truly gone then, isn't it. She's still alive, and Akitoshi still has something to live for, hug to the deepest part of him and hope that the monster never gets to it, never starts eating it away. It's her, her inside him and his feelings for her keeping it away, repelling it. Most of the time, he feels numb to everything but the soul-wrenching emptiness, but when he thinks about her—when he thinks about her, he feels something else: love, the kind of love that drives a person not to eat for days at an end, the kind that drives them to seek out their lover at all costs, cling on and never let go, never let go.

But this conversation of the two women worries him. His mind, almost unintentionally, goes to a darker place.

"Excuse me," he calls out to them, ducks under the sign of his booth to smile at them. He knows from looking into the metal of his spoon during meals—questioning his identity, who he is, _what he is,_ repeating to himself, _Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?_ and dreaming of what could never be, fantasizing about what could have been if he'd just _been better_, had different roots—

He takes a deep breath and buries the onslaught of feelings to dig up at another time. He knows that he looks different from his father, has gained the sharp, delicate jawline and high cheekbones of his mother, as well as the melancholy in his eyes as a gift from heartbreak. He doesn't have the strong, broad looks of the fancied men those women swoon after, but there is a dark mystery to how he looks that seems to draw people in like moths to light.

"Who are you talking about?" he asks.

The two women exchange a glance between them and one of them decides to speak up. "Fujioji Yoshino, of course," she says. "Died during childbirth. I'm surprised you didn't know. They're holding a funeral for her on Saturday. It's a tragedy, really, and—"

But Akitoshi had stopped listening the moment Yoshino's name left the woman's mouth. Subconsciously, his arm wraps around his mid-section and presses down to assure himself that no, no a gaping hole hadn't just appeared there.

Despite the physical assurance, he knows this kind of hole won't leave a single mark on his body; it's the emptiness burning away inside of him—that he can _feel_ joining the hole in his heart—that leaves the biggest mark.

~x~

"Akitoshi," his father says.

Akitoshi looks up from the corner of his room. His father has shadows under his eyes now, wrinkles and sags that hadn't been there ten months before. "What?" he demands irritably. He turns his head away, curls up to protect his center, to envelope the hole inside of him. "Go away, you churl."

"Son…" His father sighs out a loaded breath and sits downs against the wall near his door. Akitoshi wonders what took his father so long to finally reappear and take up his role as a father figure.

He's eighteen already, Akitoshi is—that's nine years without parents…and five since he met Yoshino-sama, he thinks afterward.

"Are you okay?" his father asks awkwardly, his voice a monotone born from confusion and being out-of-practice in the art of comforting his son.

Akitoshi curls himself tighter as the monster grows hungrier, the flame burns brighter, and the emptiness where his heart should be throbs harder. So many holes in him, he thinks, so many and maybe, just maybe they could have been prevented if one old man could have looked up…for just one moment, looked up and realized that there was something wrong with his son, some woman of innocence haunting his dreams with voice celestial and lips red with the blood of his heart.

"Son…I just want you to know"—his father's dialogue if riddled with pauses and holes where there should have been none—"that I…I love you, you know? You're still my boy and I may not have always been there…but I'm here now. I'm here now, and I just—I'm gonna stay." His voice grows firm on the last few words.

Akitoshi pivots on his heels and uses the wall to push him until he's facing his father. "What's it like?" he croaks.

Surprise flickers across the old man's eyes. Then, they soften. "Love?" he voices. Akitoshi nods. "It's a wonderful thing," his father continues. His eyes grow starry and he goes far away, reminiscent of his wife during the "honey-moon" period of their marriage. "It fills you up and leaves you bubbles inside…Kind of like really good wine," he laughs, becoming grounded again.

Akitoshi turns this over in his head, compares it to his feelings for Yoshino—and he realizes that never, not once had he ever felt that way around her. There had only been the emptiness, the wanting, and a heavy sense of paranoia that she would leave him—and didn't she? Didn't she leave him in the end?

"Liar," he accuses roughly, turning away with as much ferocity as a lion—because he must love Yoshino, sure as the sun and the stars, and if it is a comparison between his love and his father's, surely his father's is a lie when Akitoshi knows love to be nothing like the bubbly, good-wine feeling his father describes, knows it to be pain and wanting and never being enough.

"What d'you mean?" the old man voices frantically as he feels Akitoshi slipping away.

Akitoshi curls himself up tight like a roly-poly and clenches his fists tightly to his temple (empty, empty, empty), trying and failing to cry at something lost. And all the while, the monster rears up, ferocious, and eats him to the edge.

~x~

Kiyoshita is crying, leaning against Yoshino-sama's husband like Tsukishima is his life support, the only thing keeping him from crossing the thin line between life and death.

Yoshino's funeral is open casket. Her family had decorated her cheeks with make-up and painted her lips a fierce red. She is clad in a traditional Japanese kimono. Even in death, she is beautiful, Akitoshi thinks, but the strand of hair that usually falls in front of her face is pinned behind be ear and doesn't swing like a pendulum in the breeze anymore, and her lips will never curve into a smile again.

Akitoshi doesn't shed one tear throughout the whole funeral; he can't. All he can feel is the gaping hole in his chest, un-fillable now that Yoshino is gone—and even before, it was never enough, her presence had never been enough because she had never been his and now…now she never will be.

Akitoshi gasps at this realization and his pain breaks him in half.

~x~

Kiyoshita finds him after the funeral. Akitoshi doesn't think he remembers him, and he doesn't. He is just angry and hurting and crying, crying, crying as he swings his fist and crashes it to Akitoshi's nose.

Akitoshi falls to the ground in pain, but that is nothing compared to the pain in his chest. He curls up, breathing shallow and through his mouth, and Kiyoshita watches for a moment before running back to his family.

Rain starts pouring down, chills Akitoshi's body to the bone. His arms wrap around his stomach as he gasps for breath—he can't breathe, _I can't breathe,_ because the emptiness, the beast, it's eating away at the very last of him, dragging him down in his weakness into the abyss and…

_I can't breathe,_ are Akitoshi's last thoughts, as darkness closes in above him and the beast consumes the last of him.

~x~

Ulquiorra thinks of Yoshino, of the boy he used to be and the emptiness death should have freed him from, and he wonders what is afterward…

What is after Hueco Mundo and his time as a Hollow? Ulquiorra knows that death by _zanpaku-tou_ is supposed to cleanse the soul, help the Hollow move on to Soul Society to live happily ever after in one of the districts in the Rukongai. But can he move on? Do Arrancar's get a happily ever after? Will, instead, he be sentenced to an eternity of nothingness or will some part of him be reincarnated into someone else, something else? Will he meet another Yoshino-sama and become infatuated with her or will it be the other way around? Will he be the one with a ripped-out heart or will he rip away someone else's, like he'd done to Kurosaki?

Ulquiorra doesn't care—he'd always believed that a forever stretched out before him in Hueco Mundo—but he knows that he's ready now, ready to move on to whatever is waiting for him after.

He raises his hand to his eyes, watching particles of his soul blow away like ashes in the wind. "Kill me now, Kurosaki Ichigo," he commands.

"But—" the Shinigami begins to protest. "You expect me to win like this!"

And Ulquiorra thinks irately—_can't you see, you foolish boy, you never killed me, you were centuries too late—I died long before Kiyoshita killed me, lost my heart long before I became a Hollow—and this…this isn't winning, this is a resolution, this—_

Ulquiorra turns away. "Idiot Shinigami," he sneers. "Is the purpose of your very existence not to free earth-bound souls of their troubles?"

That stops the boy, but he still doesn't lift his sword.

_Looks like I won't get to see after._

"Tch." Ulquiorra sighs. "You never do what I think you will do. In the end you people did interest me."

He looks to the side, at Orihime Inoue, imagines that she is Yoshino and reaches out with slender fingers._ I see my heart now…it is right here, in the palm of my hand._

_ Mine._

"Woman, are you afraid?"

She shakes her head. Her tears slide down her smooth cheeks and drip, drip, drip to the ground of Hueco Mundo. She reaches out to him, but already, Ulquiorra knows their fingers will not touch.

_Finally,_ he thinks as the wind sweeps him away and scatters him to the four winds.

* * *

><p>AN: Gosh…this was a lot longer than I thought it'd be. Honestly, when starting this, I thought it'd be 1,000-something words or so…not 7,000-something words or so.

So…tell me what you guys think in the reviews, please, and if I should continue writing for _Bleach_. I already feel rather intimidated by Tite Kubo's character development skills so…I hope Ulquiorra wasn't too OOC. I was trying to show a different shade of him in this fic, who he was leading up to the Arrancar arc and Aizen.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Demons by the Imagine Dragons or _Bleach_ by Tite Kubo.


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